You're right. Win2k uses a microkernel architecture. The kernel is kept tiny and streamlined, but upon receiving events it passes execution off to a userland service, which does all the work of addressing that event. Perhaps there's a very good reason why these services can't be written with managed code, unfortunately I don't know what it is.
I'm unconvinced that they helped me with my grades.
I've found just the opposite. I started bringing a laptop to class during the second half of my university career. I'm just finishing up now, and the difference it has made has been quite remarkable. Lecture slides have always been made available via PDFs on the class websites, but if you wanted to make notes you had to print the slides off and write on them. I've found I react much better to an electronic environment where you can take notes directly on the PDF with annotations. The only case where this doesn't work is math courses that use non-ascii symbols.
I found that when I had to take notes on printed paper, the paper would get lost, chewed, and become completely disorganized in a matter of weeks. Come finals, I'd be left with a gigantic stack of paper that meant absolutely nothing to me. Once I started annotating PDFs, my electronic housekeeping instinct kicked in. I automatically organized everything by course, and then by different areas of each course (ie, projects, notes, assignments, midterms, finals, etc...). I found the electronic method of organization to be MUCH easier to deal with than the paper method.
Plus my laptop reminds me of calendar appointments, provides me quick and easy access to the course newsgroups, websites, my email, and google at any time in any place on campus. It has made organization MUCH easier and allowed me to focus on my studies. My grades reflect it too. After buying a notebook, my average increased 10%. I attribute this to the fact that I was actually able to study from notes I made during class, instead of looking hopelessly at the pile of paper and turning directly to the textbooks.
And the best part is that instead of carrying around ~1000 pages of handwritten mess, all this fits into something the size of a small textbook.
I suppose it's a matter of preference. I found that it did wonders for me.
What the GNOME guys are up to
on
KDE 4 Screenshots
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Conceivably some of these goodies could be merged into KDE. Given the blatant sexiness of this handful of technologies, I'd expect it will be happening reasonably soon.
And I believe that everywhere you see "Search", it is a beagle indexed search. WinFS eat your heart out.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. Win2k uses a microkernel architecture. The kernel is kept tiny and streamlined, but upon receiving events it passes execution off to a userland service, which does all the work of addressing that event. Perhaps there's a very good reason why these services can't be written with managed code, unfortunately I don't know what it is.
I'm unconvinced that they helped me with my grades.
I've found just the opposite. I started bringing a laptop to class during the second half of my university career. I'm just finishing up now, and the difference it has made has been quite remarkable. Lecture slides have always been made available via PDFs on the class websites, but if you wanted to make notes you had to print the slides off and write on them. I've found I react much better to an electronic environment where you can take notes directly on the PDF with annotations. The only case where this doesn't work is math courses that use non-ascii symbols.
I found that when I had to take notes on printed paper, the paper would get lost, chewed, and become completely disorganized in a matter of weeks. Come finals, I'd be left with a gigantic stack of paper that meant absolutely nothing to me. Once I started annotating PDFs, my electronic housekeeping instinct kicked in. I automatically organized everything by course, and then by different areas of each course (ie, projects, notes, assignments, midterms, finals, etc...). I found the electronic method of organization to be MUCH easier to deal with than the paper method.
Plus my laptop reminds me of calendar appointments, provides me quick and easy access to the course newsgroups, websites, my email, and google at any time in any place on campus. It has made organization MUCH easier and allowed me to focus on my studies. My grades reflect it too. After buying a notebook, my average increased 10%. I attribute this to the fact that I was actually able to study from notes I made during class, instead of looking hopelessly at the pile of paper and turning directly to the textbooks.
And the best part is that instead of carrying around ~1000 pages of handwritten mess, all this fits into something the size of a small textbook.
I suppose it's a matter of preference. I found that it did wonders for me.
To provide some alternate perspective:
Screens:
Screen1
Screen2
Screen3
Videos:
Vids taken with a video camera
New window manager video (long)
Conceivably some of these goodies could be merged into KDE. Given the blatant sexiness of this handful of technologies, I'd expect it will be happening reasonably soon.
And I believe that everywhere you see "Search", it is a beagle indexed search. WinFS eat your heart out.